What if the Monaco Grand Prix circuit was abandoned, and nature allowed to fight back?

Imagine waist-height grass pushing through the bitumen that sweeps into Beau Rivage and Tabac Corner, moisture streaming through the mossy, vine-filled tunnel.

Picture a massive tree poking through the collapsed seats of the crumbling St Devote Square grandstand, the edge of the track along the Piscine falling away into the harbour, the ghostly presence of long-gone drivers lurking at every bend.

It won't be any time soon, one hopes. Though some of us would like to see unchecked vegetation do its stuff on the surrounding casinos and gauche mansions of tax exiles.

A tiny hint of the above scenario can be seen at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, about 90 minutes west of Sydney.

There, one can still walk a full lap of Catalina Park, last used for serious racing in the 1970s and now intact but thoroughly overgrown.

Similarities between Catalina Park and the Circuit de Monaco are slight, other than both being very narrow and, at times, fatally dangerous. At Catalina, foliage is pushing inwards from both sides, leaving only a car width or so in the centre of the track and completely wrecking the cornering lines.

In some places trees are growing through the bitumen, which would make it hard to hit some apexes without also hitting a solid piece of eucalyptus.

Today's lap time would be somewhat lower than the 141km/h average once achieved around the tight, hilly 2.1-kilometre track by Frank Matich.

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Yes, there is always something haunting about abandoned race circuits. I felt it yet again while walking Catalina.

Every distant car or truck sounds like the approaching wail of a racing engine.

At least three drivers died at Catalina. There's a story of Aboriginal dispossession too, now afforded far more prominence on the official signage than any glorious feats behind the wheel.

The track was officially opened in the early 1960s in a place known as The Gully.

Bizarrely, it was just a few hundred metres from the centre of Katoomba.

Did no one realise how much noise 20 open-wheelers would make in a rock-lined natural amphitheatre? With houses so close, the surprise is that the track lasted so long.

It was built by volunteers from the Blue Mountains Sporting Drivers Club and incorporated design suggestions from Jack Brabham, though none from the local Aboriginal community, whose principal suggestion was to go away and build the track elsewhere (though they possibly did not use those words).

Most of Catalina's outer fencing was solid wood. It's still there, though the advertisements for cigarettes and Cinzano have largely faded. Some red-rusted Armco lines the interior in places. Elsewhere, solid rock faces did the job. As barriers went, sandstone wasn't terribly forgiving, but it sure as hell was durable.

In the 1970s, the track was adapted for rallycross, using the ample mud and water always to be found in the infield.

Much of the water is now running along the track, causing some of the surface to collapse and making a couple of downhill sections frighteningly mossy and slippery even on foot.

In 2002, civic authorities declared the land an Aboriginal Place. It was a permanent residence for some Gundungurra, Darug and non-Aboriginal people, according to the signs.

Trees have been planted and raised walkways erected among the sedge grasses in the infield.

But, surprisingly perhaps, authorities have chosen to leave the circuit in elegant decay.

Perhaps in a century or two archaeologists will dig it back up and restore it like a Blue Mountains Circus Maximus.